Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Industrial and Managements Systems Engineering

Committee Chair

Ashish D. Nimbarte

Committee Member

Alan McKendall

Committee Member

Bhaskaran Gopalakrishnan

Abstract

Selection of appropriate gloves plays an important role in the overall comfort and productivity of workers. Currently, there are no standards and/or guidelines available to systematically evaluate the glove performance based on speed-accuracy trade-off. The ISO 9241-411 standard which is based on Fitts’ Law has been extensively used in the literature to measure speed-accuracy trade-off in terms of throughput in the virtual environments. This study was aimed at developing guidelines for implementing ISO 9241-411 standard in the physical environment so that it can be used to estimate (and compare) throughputs of safety gloves. Specifically, the various physical attributes of objects used in the target transfer tasks (within the ISO 9241-411 standard) were evaluated using an experimental study. Fifteen healthy subjects performed a series of target transfer tasks using three glove conditions (barehand, glove type 1, glove type 2), three object heights (0.28", 0.43", 0.88"), two object materials (nylon, stainless-steel) and two object shapes (circular, hexagonal). The main effect of glove condition was statistically significant. The mean throughput for the barehand was 3.61 bits/sec, and for glove types 1 and 2, the mean throughputs were 3.36 bits/sec and 3.31 bits/sec, respectively. The interaction effect of object height with object material was statistically significant. The mean throughput for 0.88" stainless-steel objects (2.99 bits/sec) was significantly different from 0.88" nylon objects (3.13 bits/sec), but for 0.28" and 0.43" objects, there was no difference in the mean throughput due to difference in the material. The main effect of object shape was statistically insignificant. Based on the additional analysis of different statistical measures, the stainless-steel 0.88" circular object was found to perform better compared to other objects in terms of its ability to distinguish different glove conditions. In summary, this study concludes that it is possible to use ISO 9241-411 standard in a 3-D physical environment to compare barehanded exertions with gloved exertions. However, it cannot be said conclusively that the standard can be used for comparing different gloves.

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